Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Mini Update?!

Well according to two different reports it seems Apple will be queitly speed bumping their Mac mini.Think Secret seems to have a source reporting "receiving a 1.5GHz Mac mini Tuesday, although the box still featured the old 1.42GHz label."

°Graphics card remains an ATI Radeon 9200 but now features double the VRAM at 64MB

°The hard drives have also been upgraded to 5,400-rpm models

°features Bluetooth 2.0+EDR support

"Sources have informed the website that Mac mini box labels will continue to list the older specifications with no indication of whether the newer or older systems are contained within. The motivation behind this is to help clear current inventory without lowering prices."

Apple iTunes for Windows Mobile 5.0?Could this be Legit or a hoax? Web site Technology-ninjasays "I managed to get my hands on Apple iTunes for Windows Mobile 5.0. After the Motorola ROKR Apple seems to get seriously into the mobile phone business. As my sources tell there will be a special data rate for T-Mobile bundled with devices that come with iTunes (maybe we'll see an official announcement soon)."

"The version I could test was iTunes for Windows Mobile 5.0 version 0.9. Although it looks pretty complete (everything (except bonjour) is in place and even podcast sync worked like a champ (see picture)) it's not a customer ready version. I don't know anything about the release dates or announcement dates at the moment.

Some words to the graphical user interface: Apple decided to use the well known iTunes in favor of the iPod user interface. Since the buttons and functionalities are all where I expected them it's as easy to use as the "big" version of iTunes.

I did not have the time for an in-depth test yet but it seems that it is not limited in the way the Motorola ROKR is. Nevertheless I was not able to sync it with a PC/Mac iTunes yet since there are no drivers (and I haven't got any) I successfully copied 1 GB of MP3/AAC files onto a SD Card and I could play it all. When I inserted the SD Card iTunes automatically searched for media files and rebuilt it's library. After some seconds I could start listening."

I'll continue to follow this. Tell me what you think.

Safari with Dashboard widget detection?Seems like AppleInsider has some news on "A forthcoming version of Apple Computer's Safari Web browser may automatically detect the presence of Dashboard widgets on a website, according to developers who've located evidence of such a feature in an unreleased version of Mac OS X "Tiger."

"Although it's unclear in which build the evidence first appeared, developers have uncovered a set of Dashboard-skinned interface buttons in a version of Safari under development as part of the yet-to-be-released Mac OS X 10.4.3 system update."

"Judging by the buttons, which are designed to be placed in Safari's address bar, developers speculate they will eventually let users to add widgets to the Dashboard without leaving their browser window."

Widgets have become very popular with users. Apple has many here so does Yahoo and of coarse The Graphic Reporter has her favorites, her "widgets of the week".

So Don't Forget to listen in to Shawn tonight on Your Mac LifeApple will replace cracked Nano screensApple Computer said Tuesday that "problems with iPod nano screens breaking, as are not a design issue", but rather an issue of vendor quality that affected less than 1/10 of 1% of the total iPod nano units that it has shipped over the last two and a half weeks.

Furthermore, the company is now replacing those units that do have problems through AppleCare.

They also said "The iPod nano is made with the same high-quality polycarbonate plastic as the fourth-generation iPod. We suggest concerned customers use one of the iPod nano cases that are coming to market to protect the music player".

Warner getting tuff?It seems that Michael Nash, Warner's digital strategy chief, suggested labels might have no choice other than cut Apple's digital music sales off at a stroke.

Saying what I think are dumb things like "What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then?"

But the story by The Register goes on to say "Apple has never seen its iTunes Music Store as a profit center - but as a marketing ploy to promote its iPod music player. It barely breaks even on iTunes Music sales, and keeps about four cents of every 99 cent download."

So I see Apple lowering the price to 39 or 29 cents.It seems Steve just might be right, greed does drive people to do some extreme things. And thinking of cutting Apple off has more repercussions then then Mr. Nash thinks.